Blog
I’ve been working on a fun project in collaboration with Gist Yarn. And this week, it is ready for the world. The Tapestry Discovery Box has launched and I’d love to share it with all of you. If you’ve ever wished for an ongoing community of tapestry weavers to talk about and troubleshoot technique and design problems with, this subscription course might be exactly the thing for you.
Last week I had the joy of teaching at SOAR. That stands for Spin Off Autumn Retreat. This is a small conference that has been running for something like 30 years albeit with a hiatus during one of the times Interweave had been sold to another company. Spin Off magazine is now owned by Longthread Media. One of the co-owners is Linda Ligon who is the person who started Interweave magazine (soon to become Handwoven) in the 70s. Linda was there along with mastermind Anne Merrow and they pulled off a beautiful event (along with Spin Off editor Kate Larson and a fantastic team of organizers).
I took a trip to New Mexico on the spur of the moment last weekend. It is unusual for me to decide to take a trip that involves 6-7 hours of driving each way at the last minute, but the stars aligned, and off we went. We had some friends who we wanted to see who were there visiting from Europe and the first weekend of October is Taos Wool Festival weekend. Yes, I know that this festival left Taos and was held in Santa Fe. I didn’t go to the renamed Mountain and Valley Wool Festival partly in disappointment at it leaving Taos, but also because I was tired of driving and didn’t want to go all the way to Santa Fe when Taos was so beautiful.
Instead, I haunted Taos Wool’s pop-up shop and gallery show. One of the highlights of the weekend for me was hearing Connie Taylor speak about churro sheep, wool, and uses for their fleece. Connie is someone I met in 2005 when I was a student at Northern New Mexico Community College in the fibers department. At that time she had a big flock of churro sheep and was making 14 different colors of natural wool. (That fact still astounds me, but I saw it for myself and know it to be true.) I purchased her wool for my saltillo project. In Taos, she had her shade card with her, pictured below, along with a wide range of natural churro yarns.
For many years when I first started weaving tapestry I used the yarn that my teacher used. After all, it was a great yarn, dyed well, and I was able to get most of the effects I wanted in my work using it.
When I started teaching tapestry, I began experimenting with other tapestry yarns and then with some yarns that are not specifically designed for tapestry weaving. It became a bit of an obsession and over the years of teaching tapestry weaving, I’ve collected and used something like 30 different yarns. Some were difficult and not suited to tapestry and I’ll never use them again for weaving. Others were yarns I loved because they suited the effects I wanted to achieve in my work.
I have a small set of favorites that I use myself, but there are many yarns made in the world that can be used for tapestry weaving. The question is, how do you know which ones those are?
If you’ve taken any of my online classes, you probably have some version of my Yarn Sources handout. As my list of yarns got longer and longer, I realized I might have a problem. I like to collect things and yarn is one of those things. In the name of research I have more tapestry yarns than I can possibly ever use. But the upside of that is that my students get to benefit from my hoarding collecting nature.
Istex is the business that processes most of the fleece in Iceland.* I am quite sure I have never seen so much wool in one place.
There is only one scouring facility in Iceland and it is in Blönduós where I did my artist residency. Istex is the largest wool processing organization in Scandinavia and exists in Iceland in a couple different locations. In Blönduós they do the scouring and at the end of that process, the fleece is baled in 300 kg lots for shipment either to Europe to make carpet in the case of the lowest grade winter wool, or to the next Istex facility to be spun into yarn.
Huge bags of wool arrive from all over Iceland awaiting processing. I have no idea how much wool was here waiting, but countless bays like these full to the ceiling plus shipping containers outside.
I am still at my Icelandic Textile Center residency in Blonduos. I’ve had a lot of fun researching and working with Icelandic fleece. Please see THIS earlier post for more details about Icelandic fleece and my project.
After the sod house tapestry and the woven sample I showed in that post, I kept spinning and finished another small tapestry. The more I spun, the more I could recognize what I needed in the yarn and I’ve gotten closer to singles that I like. When starting out, I was putting very little twist in the single because that is what you’re “supposed” to do when spinning singles that are to stay singles. But for tapestry, I didn’t like it. It was far too bumpy and uneven and more twist allows me to smooth it out to make a more even single.
Who else is a loom geek? I really enjoy trying out different pieces of equipment and though I’d love to try every large tapestry loom, mostly I’m testing small looms that I have the space for (or not!). Last week I talked about this new-to-me loom I’m playing with from weaversbazaar in the UK. I’ve had a wonderful time picking the shed and trying out the WB heavy 5/2 wool. You can read about that HERE. I wanted to share a bit more about the clamps that are holding the loom and try them with a couple other looms I like.*
